


someone to watch over me

by oonaseckar



Category: Dollhouse, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:22:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22269346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oonaseckar/pseuds/oonaseckar
Summary: Adelle has a new client at the Dollhouse.Derek has given up hope: he's willing to settle for substitutes.
Relationships: Adelle DeWitt/Laurence Dominic, Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13





	someone to watch over me

**Author's Note:**

> Work title is a song title, Ella Fitzgerald.
> 
> Chapter title is Henrik Ibsen, 'A Doll's House'.

"...utterly, completely in love with you." Adelle watched the potential new client, as he examined the swirl of scotch in the glass she'd poured him, before giving him the standard spiel. And then asking him about the truest desires of his heart, a question that always seemed to go better with the addition of some smooth single malt into the mix.

Clients were uncomfortable with the whole introduction/interview/snowing process. It was natural. Rossum gave them the chance to buy the experience of their dreams –- to buy the _person_ of their dreams, for incredibly satisfactory fulfillment. They wanted it, but they weren't necessarily _proud_ of that fact. Nor comfortable with exposing those dreams. And Adelle –- despite years of repetitive inurement, despite the thick callous of indifference and sophistication that left her soul dead to all but the most brutal sensation –- actually winced.

Even she. Even she wasn't quite, fully, unshockable. Some of these perverts God damn _ought_ to be uncomfortable, the... She caught herself up.

This fellow, though. What he wanted was a walk in the park. Literally, amongst other things. With daisy-chains, and picnics, and skinny-dipping at midnight in a lake beneath a starry sky.

It was charming. Rather more so than the man himself, but Adelle was willing to make allowances, for anyone providing her with such a relief from the spankers and the spankees and the sadists and those of permanently deformed, disordered character. Not that this Hale fellow wasn't amply provided with attractions. It was just that it appeared he relied upon them, rather than any glib chat and charm of manner, to do the work for him.

And, she thought –- appraising him surreptitiously from beneath kohl'd lids –- not without reason. No-one with that face would require smart pick-up lines or intensive wooing regimes, in order to score a little action, or a steady girlfriend or boyfriend, a significant other. Quite easily pretty enough to be a Doll himself, Hale was.

And that, despite the cynical twist to his mouth, as he appeared to digest her answer, and find it bitter. Or perhaps steamingly off, rotten and ripe and ready for the trash-can. "Right," he said, shortly, and the snicker he emitted had not the littlest bit of humor. "You know, we can just dispense with the flim-flam and the exaggerated sales claims if you want." He looked at her directly now, instead of the bored drink-examination and sullen wall-gazing. "I know what you charge, and I can pay it. You come... recommended. A good enough facsimile is good enough for me. Or," he hesitated, "it'll have to be. Like I say, Miss DeWitt: what I want is someone to pretend to fall in love with me." And he tipped his chin up, and stared at her challengingly –- but there was the tiniest, most minor tremor in his gaze. Those eyes, hazel with a touch of blue? Unusual. Rossum could have made a fortune if he'd been of a mind, or in a sufficiently compromising position to ever sign a contract... Never mind that.

He looked like someone daring her to mock his desires, for their hackneyed innocence. She would sooner have kissed his cheek and pressed the dear, prickly, sentimental darling to her womanly bosom, if she didn't think he'd snap her head off and leave in short order. If only there were more like him. "If they do it well enough for me to be able to suspend disbelief, then that's good enough," he finished shortly, a touch belligerent now. Combative, he was, for a dreamer after a taste of love.

It was charming, even if that was against his will. But she couldn't allow the challenge to Rossum's more than impressive technological capabilities stand.


End file.
